Saturday, March 1, 2008

Lipstick Jungle: Chapter 4: Bombay Highway

This episode was good! Good, of course, being compared to the other episodes. The characters had real conflict, they were in constant interaction with each other and the way that they came together made sense. The show is still not exactly high-caliber television. And they air this on Thursday nights? For shame, NBC. This is definitely a Friday night show. Nevertheless, after tonight's episode, I saw a glimmer of hope for the series.

The recap: Nico is still being sued for sexual harassment by BoyToy. Nico lies to Julian Sands that she knows him or what he wants. She then confesses to her friends about BoyToy, and they are shocked... that she didn't tell them earlier. This revelation causes Victory to go into Selfish Depression and Wendy to interrupt her husband's laundry duties with some dirty sex.

Wendy's latest "passion project" is a love story called Bombay Highway, and she wants to throw a huge premiere party for it. Victory gets to design a number for the film's The Hills-esque warbling, drunk starlet. She acts like a six-year-old brat about having to listen to orders from Wendy. To Wendy's credit, she doesn't give in that easily.

Nico, meanwhile, re-discovers how awesome her husband is, only to suspect that he too may be getting a little close with one of his students. (The obvious answer would be that he is cheating on Nico. Therefore, on Lipstick Jungle, he is.) Nico visits BoyToy - now Bartender BoyToy - to ask why he is suing her. He looks at her with sad eyes - and obviously waxed eyebrows - and whimpers away. He drops the lawsuit later that day, because he wants to get busy with Nico again. Nico, now thinking her husband may be doing some dirty work himself, decides to go ahead and cheat on him once more. After all, BoyToy is only happy through sex!

There was also something about the Starlet getting drunk thanks to Victory and crashing into cars and other stuff like that, and something about how no one even saw the movie because the party was too good, but, who cares?

What worked: We actually had a reason to care about most characters this week. Nico's crisis put her marriage, job and friendship at jeopardy. Wendy's career was kind of on the line, as was her sanity and friendship with Victory. And Victory actually had to work, which was challenging enough for her. (Seriously, how did she ever get famous? Girl's a slacker.) Julian Sands rocks his socks off as the Owner of Everything. He never got a chance to seriously flex any acting muscle on 24, so it is great to see him doing what he can with this role. Brooke Shields is starting to settle into her role, which makes the character more believable. And you know what else worked? Kim Raver. She can say so much with her face, it's crazy. It makes the Nico character not only believable, but also a little sympathetic.

What didn't work:Access Hollywood is NOT on 24/7. They do not even do news cut-ins.This show is supposed to be fashionable, right? So why did the costume department dress Brooke Shields in saran wrap for the Bombay Highway premiere?It's week four, and no Bonfire magazine.We introduced a critic who didn't like Victory's work, but never resolved that with this episode. Are we going to revisit that in the future, or was it time killer?Victory Ford. Please.... shut up. You are whiny, bratty and have a socially-immature boyfriend. Dump him for your assistant, who actually cares about your feelings, or, at least, is capable of feeling them like the rest of us humans.

Next week: Victory realizes someone has been stealing her stuff, so we'll get to spend lots of time with her so take a Tylenol before watching. Wendy tries to help Shane's music career, which, wasn't he an architect in the pilot? Whatever, show. Also, Nico tries to get Kirby a different job.

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The views and opinions expressed in this blog do not reflect the views and opinions of The Collegiate, the student-run newspaper of Grand Rapids Community College. By extension, this blog does not reflect the views and opinions of GRCC. All viewpoints are reflective only of the author(s) who wrote them. This blog is not a classroom assignment. Rather, it is a labor of love (or spite, perhaps) for those who work on it.